Unbelievable Radio Program with Abdullah al-Andalusi

Well, good afternoon and welcome, and a really fascinating topic for you this afternoon. In fact, it's been a long, long time really since we did this in a Muslim-Christian context. The Trinity. Does belief in the Trinity lead to polytheism, is basically what we're talking about.

Does it necessitate polytheism? It's, if you like, been one of the paradoxes of the Christian faith for millennia, the idea that God exists as three in one, one in three. And here to help us understand that from a Christian perspective is James White.

James is the Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries in the United States. It has a wide brief really, in terms of Christian apologetics. James debates many different types of people, but has been over here in the UK debating Muslims for the last week or so, and will be doing quite a high-profile debate with Shabbir Ali.

That's taking place on Monday, the 17th of November from 7 .30pm, and it's going to be at Twynholm Baptist Church. Am I pronouncing that correctly, James? Or maybe you're not the best person to ask. You're asking a person from Arizona how to pronounce a British word, yes.

It's either Twynholm or Twinholm Baptist Church. It's in Fulham Cross, and you can get there on Monday from 7 .30 to listen and to, well, witness that debate. So I do encourage you to get along there if you'd be interested in that.

Thank you for coming on this afternoon, James, and tell us a little bit about yourself. You obviously live out, as you say, in Phoenix, Arizona. You must be enjoying our British weather.

I am actually enjoying the British weather. We have about 360 days of sunshine in Arizona. We've seen 50 degrees in the shade there, which is 122 for us, and so it's a little bit different than here in London.

But I'm an elder in the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. I'm an adjunct professor at the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. I have taught Greek, Hebrew, systematic theology, church history issues along those lines, and especially in apologetics.

But since 1983, 25 years now, I've been the director of Alpha Omega Ministries, which is a Christian apologetics organization, and we do engage in a wide variety of apologetic interactions. I've written over 20 books on a number of subjects, including the doctrine of the Trinity, and also textual critical issues.

A book that I wrote against the King James Only controversy has been used as a textbook in the U .S. for quite some time now, and so that's really where a lot of my interest lies, is in the original languages and the texts of the New Testament and the Old Testament.

Well, it's great to have you with us, and I'm sure you would be fascinated on all kinds of subjects, not just the Trinity, but that obviously is what we'll be looking at today. And to my mind, probably when I meet Muslims, that's probably one of the first things that they will bring up as regards to why they don't see Christianity as coherent or believable.

I mean, so it's an important one to address in many ways, isn't it, James?

Well, it is, and for not only the apologetic reason of an encounter with Islam or any of the other world religions, but also for the fact that I think that especially Evangelicalism has been impoverished as our people have become less and less familiar with their own faith, and especially with the doctrine of the Trinity.

Christianity does not present a God that we worship that we don't know. In fact, the biblical command is we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so I think that our worship is impoverished when we do not understand what the Bible reveals about the relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, what that means to our worship.

Even the Gospel itself, I believe, is a Trinitarian Gospel. It finds its origination in God the Father and is the Son who brings about the very means by which the Gospel can take place, that is, that transaction upon the cross.

It's the Spirit that comes and makes that Gospel come alive. So it's a Trinitarian religion all the way through, and so when we have people who don't understand it for themselves, that impacts their life.

And then, of course, if you don't understand it for yourself, you certainly are.

Going to struggle to try to explain it to someone else. Well, we're going to be looking into this with the help of Abdullah Al-Yusufi. Abdullah, your first time on the program as well, so welcome along to the program.

Pleasure to be here. Great to have you. Now, you are obviously a Muslim, and tell us a little bit about yourself. Have you always seen yourself as a Muslim? And sort of how did you arrive at this place.

You are now of engaging in these kinds of debates,.

Etc.? Well, I haven't always been a Muslim. I used to be a Christian, Church of England Christian, really, up until I was a teenager. And I chose Islam after a kind of a very long and arduous search for the truth.

And I analysed every religion that you can think of, Jainism, Shintoism, even Rastafarianism, every kind of religion, regardless of where it came from, its background, or whether it's culturally outside what I would recognise.

I researched these different religions, and Islam was last on my list because I didn't think that Islam would have anything interesting to say about the truth of the world and the universe and existence.

And then I came upon the laws and the rules and the understandings and the theology of Islam, and it's very much agreed with my rational search and so on. So I became Muslim after that point. And then after this, I kind of looked into understanding more about Islam, understanding more about the world, not just religions, but also politics, also sociology and psychology of human beings and so on, to deepen my understanding about the human existence on earth and about how we interact and so on and so forth.

And why is it that many people around the world, they have common phenomenons that they experience, like spiritual experiences and so on, whichever religion you're from. So I wanted to kind of research everything to get a kind of a bigger world picture than just maybe a narrow worldview for my particular religion or a particular viewpoint and so on.

And that's basically what led me to discussing theology. Although my main lines of social activity or political activity is along the lines of, I debate most with secularists, I do social work with Muslim youths, I do political work in terms of trying to work for and revive the kind of Islamic system in the Middle East and so on, and to bring, you know, for justice and so on.

Obviously I raise causes of injustice around the world, both Muslim and non-Muslim, so these are the kind of activities that I'm engaged in and so on. And this, I mean, I don't usually deal with philosophical discussions, but because I've, obviously I researched it when I was choosing religions, I researched it when I was investigating Islam and comparative religion, I think it's kind of like a bit of a pastime I can engage in now and again.

Well, thank you so much for being with us, and I know that you're a regular, as it were, on YouTube. I've seen a couple of your tapes there, and if you want to see Abdullah in action, go to youtube .com forward slash Mujtahid 2006, that's Mujtahid 2006.

James White, you can visit his website at aomin .org, so a-o-m-i-n .org. So those are our guests on the program today. Do join us again in just a couple of minutes' time, and we're going to get into this discussion on the Trinity.

It is a central part of Christian doctrine, but can Christians defend it, and does it make sense? Those are the kind of questions that Abdullah's going to be asking of James White, our Christian apologist on the program today, so do hope you can join us again in a couple of minutes' time.

You're listening to Unbelievable on Premiere Christian Radio.

The Trinity as a Challenge in Muslim-Christian Apologetics

Welcome back. Yes, we're talking about the Trinity this afternoon, and it is often something that I think Christians probably do find hard to express to those who ask them about it, and James White, well, his job really is making clear things that sometimes seem to be mysterious in many ways, and he's going to be explaining what he believes are the biblical, if you like, explanations for the Trinity, why Christians can and should be confident in a belief in a triune God.

Well, all this talk we'll find out from Abdullah al-Bukhari this afternoon is mystifying to Muslims, and we'll find out why he believes that Christians have to believe in a polytheist God if they believe in this Trinity.

That's the question we're asking this afternoon. Does belief in the Trinity lead necessarily to polytheism? That's the topic of the show this afternoon. Do hope you can stay with us through till four o 'clock this afternoon, and don't forget you can find us online at premiere .org .uk forward slash unbelievable.

Lots of other interesting debates between Muslims and Christians in our archive there. Well, gentlemen, so let's launch into this. I'll start with you, Abdullah. I mean, you said you were searching as a young person.

Was, as it were, the reason you're leaving at least a sort of childhood sort of embrace of Christianity, was one of the reasons this Trinity issue? Did that come up in your sort of searchings, as it were?

Well, I mean, as a young boy, and growing up to being a teenager, I don't think, and I think for all the Christians around me, we didn't really have this concept of Trinity as Jesus being God, because for a child, you grow up and you see God, you know, God the Father, and you see, you know, you see our Father right in heaven, and you say that the Lord's Prayer, and then you see Jesus.

So as a child, there are two concepts. There is Jesus, and then there is the Father. And so when you pray, you're praying to the Father, and Jesus prayed to the Father. And when we saw the title of the Son of God, we understood that as a kind of metaphorical title of praise.

So, but it wasn't specifically the Trinity per se that actually got me out of Christianity, because I didn't think I understood the Trinity fully at that point. But rather, it was that I saw that Christianity, in my view, lacked any comprehensive system by which human beings can be organized, politics, economics, all these things that we live on earth, and if our purpose in life, obviously, is to worship God, then every aspect of our life should be, should revolve around this purpose.

And the thing that trained me to Islam was that it's very comprehensive, and it deals with all these subjects on a political, social, and private sphere. So that was the main law of Islam. But again, that wasn't the first thing that came to my mind initially, because I went through a whole bunch of different religions I was researching.

But when I was researching different religions, it brought interesting questions, such as, when I looked at Hinduism, or I even looked at ancient Greek mythology, how do I know that there is no multiple gods, there are no multiple gods, there are no, you know, polytheism is not the existence of the divine, it's polytheism.

How do I know this for sure? And so I had to encounter these ideas at that stage. When I contemplated it, I realized, obviously, that if there is obviously more than one God, then there's more than one infinite being, and the question would arise as to which one has more power than the other, and so on.

They would equal each other out, and then they would basically limit each other, and then how can God be unlimited? And plus, if there's like 10, 20, or 100 gods, or 100 beings, then who created them in its plurality?

You know, why is it that.

10, or 20, why not 21, or 30, or 100? So do you actually regard Christianity not as being a monotheistic faith, in that sense? If the Trinity, if we believe in this Trinity, do you regard that as, in actual fact, Christianity is a polytheistic faith?

It depends how you define Christianity.

I mean, if I was to say that it's a polytheistic faith, a lot of Unitarian Christians would become very upset with me, and rightly so, because they don't believe in the Trinity, but they affirm they are Christian.

Obviously, historical scholars have affirmed that some early Christians were Unitarian, up until within one generation after Jesus, for Ebionites, and Nazarenes, and so on and so forth. Now, I'm not going to debate as to, obviously, which doctrine is more closer in history to Jesus or not, but rather I want to focus on the actual idea, and I think that, although the Trinitarian Christians, who call themselves, obviously, monotheists, believe in one God, I think that it's really a kind of a polytheism, but masquerading as monotheism, because they try to reconcile the one God, but then they want to include Jesus and the Holy.

Spirit in this. James, in many ways, Islam, the birth of Islam, through Prophet Muhammad, was in response to what he saw as polytheistic beliefs, wasn't it? In Mecca, he saw polytheism, both in, as it were, pagan religions and in this mason Christian religion, and said, this has taken us away from the worship of the one true God, and hence, in many ways, it is the Trinity, if you like, that is partially accountable, in some ways, for the growth of Islam from the.

Well, there's a lot of question as to exactly what Muhammad's knowledge of the Doctrine of the Trinity was, what kind of Christians he had encountered. There's a lot of question as to that he only encountered Nestorian Christians, or even Christians who had any knowledge whatsoever of the Doctrine itself, or have any solid knowledge.

It's hard to say, but I think it's important to emphasize that the reason that I believe in the Doctrine of the Trinity is because I believe that the Bible is the Word of God. I believe, as Jesus said, that the Scriptures cannot be broken.

As Paul said, that all Scripture is theanoustos, it is God breathed, or as Peter put it, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And so, when I read those Scriptures, I see three foundational truths that are clearly presented in those texts.

First of all, there is only one true God. In the Old Testament, the Tetragrammaton, Yahweh, which we slaughter in English as Jehovah, but Yahweh is the one true God. He is the creator of all things. He owes His existence to none.

He is timeless. There is nothing that exists outside of His will. And yet, that same name, when we come into the New Testament, though the Greek New Testament does not contain the name Yahweh, those texts that talk about Him are applied to three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And so, we have biblical monotheism. There is only one true God. All the gods of peoples are idols, Psalm 96 .5. Before me there is no God formed, there should be none after me, Isaiah 43 .10. But then we have the introduction in the New Testament of these three divine persons, clearly distinguished from one another.

The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit. In John 14, Jesus refers to the Father. He talks about the love that exists between He and the Father. In John 17, He says He shared glory with the Father before creation itself came into existence.

And then He speaks about sending another comforter, the Holy Spirit, who proceeds forth from the Father. So we have these three persons, and then they are described as possessing the attributes and nature of God.

The Father, clearly so. The Son is described as the Creator. He is described as having eternal existence in John 1 .1. He is described as God in numerous passages. Thomas, after the resurrection, when he sees Jesus, cries out to Him.

The text cannot be taken in any other way other than saying, My Lord and My God, to Jesus. Jesus does not rebuke Him. He accepts this as a confession of faith. And then we have the Spirit. When Ananias and Sapphira lie to the Spirit of God, you have not lied to men but to God.

He is identified as God. He gives the gifts to the church as He wills. He is personal in 1 Corinthians 12. And so we have these three persons. But then we have the question, well, could it be that we are somehow violating our Old Testament monotheism?

No. Every person that writes in the New Testament was a monotheistic Jew. We would say the Shema every morning from Deuteronomy 6 .4, here of Israel, Lord our God, the Lord is one. And so we have the equality of those persons presented to us in Scripture.

Not identity, because clearly the Scriptures differentiate between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. It was not the Father who became flesh. It was the Son. It's not the Son or the Father who indwells us now.

They instead have sent the Holy Spirit, and by means of that Spirit indwell believers. And so you have these three foundations, absolute biblical monotheism, the teaching of the existence of three divine persons, and then the equality of those persons, which is the reason why if you accept sola Scriptura, Scripture alone is the sole rule of faith for the church, and tota Scriptura, all of Scripture, you are forced to the doctrine of the Trinity by taking all that information.

Together. Do you see the Trinity as something that we only really find though in the New Testament,.

Or do you believe it exists in the Old Testament, the concept? The doctrine of the Trinity is actually revealed in the coming of the Son in flesh, and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and all of that takes place between Malachi and Matthew.

The New Testament then becomes the record of that revelation of the Trinity. Each of the writers of the New Testament is an experiential Trinitarian. Think of someone like Peter. Peter stands upon the Mount of Transfiguration.

He sees Jesus transfigured. He sees the glory of Christ. He hears the Father speaking from heaven. He's now indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He is an experiential Trinitarian, and that is why the language of the New Testament is soaked in Trinitarian terminology.

Why it's so easy, for example, for the New Testament writers to speak of the Spirit of God or the Spirit of Christ in the same passage, going back and forth between the two, because there's no conflict in their understanding.

And so the revelation, is it prophesied in the Old Testament? I believe that it clearly is. In Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6, we have this prophecy of this One who is to come, and there we are told that a child will be born to us, and the term born there is the standard term in the Hebrew language for natural birth of a child, but then it says a son will be given to us, the government will be upon his shoulders, in English shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Who is this One who is to come? That such exalted language could be used of Him that is only used of Yahweh. So while I don't think that the Old Testament is quote-unquote Trinitarian in that sense, because the revelation hasn't taken place, the prophecies of that coming One, Psalm 2, speaks of One that we are to kiss the Son lest He be angry, He rules over the nations.

And so we can see in this fulfillment in the New Testament that the One who is to come is not merely just a prophet, but is in fact.

Divine knowledge. Abdullah? I mean, I would say, my comment to that is I find it highly conspicuous that the whole of the Old Testament or the belief of the Jews and Judaism, there's no revelation of the issue of Trinity.

Now, regardless of the Christian interpretation of the New Testament, which we can go into, it doesn't really matter what interpretation you have. The actual doctrine itself, when you think about it rationally, why is it that if we are required to believe in a doctrine which the Jews didn't know about for thousands of years in the Old Testament, why did the New Testament have this revelation and so on, which itself is disputed between different Christian factions and so on.

And also other issues such as obviously the total scriptura and so on, that we have to take all the scriptures. Again, where is your basis for taking all these scriptures? What scriptures, what all the scriptures are you taking?

What goes into the, you know, did Jesus give a contents page about which books are going to be, everything you're going to be, you're going to accept. So I think that it brings up a lot of questions about the origins of the issue of the Trinity, and it's just very conspicuous to anyone which I would say looks into it.

Firstly, there is no Trinitarian conception that obviously springs out of a reading of Jewish, you know, the Jewish history. But on top of that, for you, there's simply a logical problem of the idea of three gods, but one or three persons, but one God.

I mean, that for you is a central, you know, whatever interpretation you make of the New Testament, that's still.

Going to be a problem. Yeah, I mean, I think when the, perhaps when certain Christians during the history of Christianity encountered, well, they wanted the need to basically write, say, Jesus divine, but the problem is it was brought up while he was praying to a father.

And so how do you reconcile that? We want to make him divine, but who's this other person he's praying to? And obviously, I think the Holy Spirit might have been brought on later on or so, but whatever the case, in order to reconcile these contradictory things, you believe in one God, because Jesus said, you know, one God, but at the same time, you want to make Jesus divine.

And I think it's a human phenomenon that you want to make a God you can see, someone you can personally interact with. For example, in India right now, Sai Baba, who's currently living, is revealed as a God incarnate by Hindus.

Haile Selassie was revealed as a God by the Rastafarians, and there's been many human beings who've been revealed as God incarnate throughout the history of humanity, from Hercules to Krishna, and even more contemporary ones as I gave.

So I would say that the main, the problem that I have is that when looking at the history, or at least just looking at the actual, the conception, you want to have three things, which you want to make into one.

So how do you reconcile this? Well, the Christians came up with an interesting play of words. Instead of saying three Gods, three Gods in an alliance, they said, no, we'll say one God, but three persons.

But I want to know, and this is something, I mean, I've read Augustine's book on the Trinity, and I read a few contemporary explanations of the Trinity, and I think it doesn't make sense, is what is a person?

How do you define these persons? It's just the name that was brought up. It's a semantical word game to justify three, whereas if you actually dig into it, when you ask, for example, you say, right, if Jesus is eternal, fine.

Jesus was not created, fine. So he wasn't made by anything. So if he wasn't made by anything, then he's independent. He doesn't need anything. He's not a dependent being like we are. So if he's not dependent, then what need does he have of the Father?

And so on.

He prays to the Father. How does that make sense? I mean, I mean, Christians have tried sometimes, James, to sort of define the Trinity in ways that might be helpful. They've maybe talked about, well, water comes in the form of ice, steam, liquids, or think of a block, you know, which has, in a sense, two-dimensional faces, but as a whole is a three-dimensional object.

I mean, are those helpful, or are they red herrings in some way?

No, I don't. Obviously, we believe that God exists in an absolutely unique fashion. Therefore, any type of analogy to the created order is going to fail at some point. And so in my book, I have discussed the various failures of the three-leaf clover and all the rest of the stuff that people have attempted to use over time.

Obviously, we believe that God exists in a unique fashion. And again, we come back to the issue of whether this is a divine revelation or whether this is something that man comes to in some rational thought process.

And we need to be consistent. For example, a biologist raised, well, how do we know what the scriptures are? Well, how do we know what the Islamic scriptures are? I mean, we know that Surah Al-Baqarah existed as a separate book in some people's minds, even outside the Quran in the early years.

There are all sorts of questions we can ask about Uthman's revision and all those types of things. Every religion has to answer those questions. The fact that people ask those questions does not mean there's not an answer to those things.

That's the first thing. Secondly, I said, we do have to look at what the New Testament says. And the New Testament writers are monotheists. They are not saying, well, we have three gods. How do we figure out how to make them one God in any way, shape, or form?

The fact that there is one divine name, we're baptized in a single name. The fact there's one divine name that monotheistic Jews are going to recognize in the Old Testament, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the name Yahweh was rendered by the Greek term kurios, which means Lord.

It's interesting to me that that's Jesus' normative term throughout the New Testaments. He is kurios, only by the Holy Spirit can we say Jesus kurios, Jesus is Lord. And so it's not a matter of us trying to quote unquote figure this out.

We have a divine text. In this divine text, Jesus says, unless you believe that I am, using the very same terminology Yahweh uses of himself in the Old Testament, you will die in your sins. So it wasn't generations later, someone trying to go, well, we want to make Jesus a God because we want to have a God that we can see.

No, they have these inspired texts and they are attempting to do with them what the faithful Muslim attempts to do with the Qur 'an. When I interpret the Qur 'an, I try to look at all the Qur 'an has to say.

I think it's unfair to pull one part out and say, well, I'm going to isolate this out. And the Muslim agrees with that. But when it comes to the New Testament, they operate on a different standard. Instead, when we come to the New Testament, it's very, very clear.

John says, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Here you have in three phrases, the description, the fact that the Logos, the Word who becomes flesh in John 1 .14, has eternally existed.

He did not come into existence at a point in time in the past. Secondly, that there has been an eternal relationship between he and the Father, as John 1 .18 says, that God is being spoken of here as the Father and that he is as to his nature, deity.

Now, if that's in your inspired text, along with the assertion, there's only one true God, then you have to accept what that text says. It's not, it's not some, well, we just have to, we want to change things after the revelation has taken place.

This is an inherent part of.

The revelation itself. There can be no question of that. Before we get a response from Abdullah, if you're listening, you're listening to a discussion on whether the Christian doctrine of the Trinity leads to polytheism.

That's what many Muslims believe. And Abdullah Al-Yusufi is one of them. He's with me here in the studio, along with Christian apologist James White. Don't forget, you can give us your comments on the debate today by emailing unbelievable at premier .org .uk, or you can phone me your phone response to this discussion on 08456 525252 and select option five.

You can do that whether you're listening live this Saturday afternoon, or you're listening to the podcast. I can pick it up and play it out on next week's program and indeed pass on any relevant pieces of information to my guests.

Let's just get back into this discussion, because Abdullah, James is saying, look, we're not trying to make sense of something after the event. This stuff about the Trinity is inherent in the original stuff.

This isn't something that a later council tried to kind of force onto the text in some way. I mean,.

What do you make of that? Well, the Bible is not a diary. It's not a personal account of someone thinking, hmm, I want to go, you know, make three goals to one. How do I do this? Okay, I'll do it like this.

No, it's the finished document. It is, you know, produced work. I mean, and no one's going to say we're going to put three goals into one. They're going to give a spin on it. For example, pro-lifers, as I'm no doubt, I think James would be against their position.

They don't call abortion killing of children. They call abortion, abortion, just like, you know, abortion, choice of the woman to basically choose what happens to her. What do you mean pro-choice rather than pro-life?

You said pro-life. So yeah, pro-choice. So people use euphemisms and word games to change the actual, you know, meaning of, to give a different spin to what essentially is something else they're doing.

And I believe in calling a spade a spade and so on. You know, in terms of the actual text, I mean, obviously we're not here to say, right, well, you know, this text and where did it come from and so on and so forth.

Yes, this question can be asked and this is a very interesting question where that can lead. But I think in the case is that God gave us a mind and God is not author of confusion and he gave us a mind to, you know, choose between and be able to kind of tell between falsehood and truth.

So if something doesn't make sense, regardless of which book it comes from, I would, I would say, I mean, I'm very, I'll say I'm consistent in this. If the Quran says something which is irrational, I'll throw out the Quran and I'll cease being a Muslim.

I have no compunction about saying this. But likewise, I would like the Christians to approach their Bible in the same way or their interpretation of the Bible or however, wherever they derive their belief from, I'd like to them to approach this because at the end of the day, it's something that we all agree on, which is that we all have minds and we all agree on, obviously we can see the universe and existence around us.

So this common, this common language, the universal language of rational thinking, which God has given us, is an enable human beings to determine the truth and not just blindly accept texts. What if, uh, you know, if, uh, the, the, uh, Harry Potter became forgotten, then 2000 years ago, they, they came up with a book out of the ground and some believes it without critical, without critical reasoning on this.

See now what James White might condemn as, um, liberal scholarship is, uh, is actually just critical reading of the, of the texts. And I think, um, there's something else, uh, James White mentioned that, you know, we shouldn't use analogies.

We shouldn't compare the divine, uh, to any, uh, analogy to explain it and so on. And I, and I agree with this, although, you know, in, in his video on YouTube, uh, Trinity versus oneness debate part one, he used an analogy to explain, uh, the divine, the Trinity by saying that all the humans in the audience, we are all of the same substance, same Uziah, but we are all different persons, hypostasis, different persons.

Now he used an analogy in that he did use an analogy in that case. And I would say that that's actually a very interesting analogy because, um, he's saying that all these people in the audience are all one substance, but different persons.

Well, of course, but there's multiple people in the audience. No doubt that the Greek pagan gods are all made of the same substance, but they're all different gods. So I would say that, um, you know, it's for reasons like this, which I think the Trinity,.

Um, you just can't justify it logically. And I mean, would you agree that James, that, that, I mean, you've said analogies do break down because God is unique.

Yeah. And that wasn't an analogy I was using on the Trinity at all. I was, uh, Abdullah has misunderstood me. I was simply illustrating the difference between two terms, and that is being in person. And I illustrated the fact that we as human beings always differentiate between these terms.

We recognize that even inanimate objects have being, uh, pick up a rock, toss it somebody else. That will be empirical proof that a rock has being, uh, but rocks are impersonal. You can insult rock all you want.

It's not really going to care because it's not personal. And I was saying, we, as human beings share the same kind of being, our being is limited in time and space, but each one of us is personal. And we differentiate on those levels.

I was not in any way describing the Trinity with that analogy. So, uh, that that's a misunderstanding, but, uh, I am not a rationalist. Uh, I believe that God has given us our minds to think his thoughts after him.

I believe that we are to be consistent and all the rest of those things, but I'm not a rationalist. I do not sit here and say that, that man's mind is the measure of God's existence. And I do not believe there's anything irrational in recognizing the difference between being in person, uh, your being and my being, we are limited in time and space.

Uh, right now I am seven hours ahead of my family back in, in, in Phoenix. It's very difficult to call home and get the chance to talk with them at the right time. Um, I cannot by-locate between those two locations.

I am limited in time and space. God is not. And while my being is probably only shared by one person, upon what logical or rational basis do we say that God's being, being infinite cannot be shared by three divine persons fully and completely.

That is an issue of divine revelation. Is it not God's business to reveal to us exactly how much he wants us to know of his, of his divine being? Do you know what I mean? 2929 says the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children.

The secret things belong to the Lord, our God. I suppose one of your arguments.

Abdullah might be though, but if, if God wants to reveal himself to us and wants us to believe in him, why would he do it in a confusing way that, that we can't grasp with our mind? I mean, is that what you're getting at?